Chapter Text
To say that Edward Teach had a complicated relationship with the concept of soulmates was a bit of an understatement.
There was a time, when he was young and guileless and thought his mother knew everything in the entire world, that he had rather liked the idea, even hoped for a soulmate. There was certainly nothing enviable about his parents’ situation, matchless and unhappy even without his father’s drunken tirades. From his mother’s work at their manor, he heard about the Lord and Lady Carmody – the rarest thing in the world, landed gentry who were allowed to marry their soulmates – and Ed treated the idea like he treated the stolen touches of fine fabrics, the crumbs of sumptuous cakes snuck to him. When his dreams appeared he felt nearly giddy, memorizing the clean, unblemished skin and wondering if this person might be the first fine thing he would get to keep.
And then? Edward Teach grew up.
Things with his father got worse and worse. The strain of it, matched with stagnant pay and increasing duties at the manor, turned his mother into a shell of herself, clutching at prayer like a lifeline. By the time the Kraken came, burst through his arms and killed his father on the docks, Ed had become rather disenchanted with the whole business of partnership altogether, or of anything outside his own immediate control. He found a sailing ship, learned his trade, and set off doing whatever he could to leave the warmth of his dreams behind.
He could not have picked a more perfect surrogate soulmate than the ocean. Things at sea were fast-paced, volatile, and the people who sailed more often than not were matchless. The schedule was demanding, meaning sleep came in half-stolen bursts; by the time Ed joined Hornigold’s crew, there were months where he dreamed of lips only twice or thrice with how little he slept. His beard grew thick, his muscles wiry, and as the weight of the legacy he was building settled on his shoulders, he found it easy to push thoughts of his soulmate aside.
Or, at least, that’s what he told Izzy, when his newly-minted First Mate asked. Ed knew it had been a mistake to tell Izzy he had a soulmate from the millisecond the words slurred from his drunken lips, but that was a cat he couldn’t re-bag. Israel Hands – ruthlessly loyal, borderline feral, surviving on less sleep than even Ed, somehow – scoffed at the idea of soulmates at every opportunity, and Ed’s rum-laden confession was the first time he’d seen even an iota of doubt in the other man’s gaze when he looked at his captain. A slam against the nearest wall and bared teeth beneath his beard was all it took to chase it away, but Ed resolved to keep the truth closer to his chest from that moment forward.
Because the truth? The truth, despite his best efforts, was that he still hoped. On those rare, priceless evenings when he got enough sleep to dream, the sight of his soulmate’s lips felt like the perfection of basking in the sun on a cool day. Ed had missed some of the major changes, perhaps, but he knew a few things: his match had hopelessly sparse facial hair when it grew out, a somewhat tight-lipped resting expression interspersed with a truly brilliant grin, and always the cleanest, softest-looking skin. He recalled a split lip or two in his soulmate’s youth, and fumed over who would dare lay hands on Blackbeard’s other half.
And all this, paradoxically, was coupled with the near-absolute conviction that they would never meet. Ed – Blackbeard – whomever was likely to die in a gunfight, or at the hands of one navy or another, or, at this point, of boredom, while whoever haunted his dreams kept on in their gentle, unburdened life. In all the years since that first night when their connection was forged, the dream had never changed, never begun to pan outwards to show the entire face. Ed was now well into his forties, and even his secret hopes were flagging. Though a person existed, somewhere, who dreamt of him in turn, each day after monotonous day only proved that the Kraken didn’t get a happy ending, didn’t get a fine thing to hold. And, well. If that was the case, then letting Izzy believe he didn’t really care about it was a hell of a lot easier than kicking up a fuss.
But god, things were boring when he wasn’t kicking up a fuss.
It was almost a relief, when the business with this Gentleman Pirate came up. Izzy had himself in knots over the situation, and anyone contradictory enough to lamely lose his captives and then successfully retake them from Blackbeard’s three most vicious crewmates was someone Ed wanted to meet. He tried to cow his excitement in front of his crew – it always made Izzy sort of twitchy, to see him excited – but the refusal of his invitation had him nearly over the edge. They followed the strange pirate’s crew out to the Spanish ship from a distance, Izzy grumbling all the while.
He hadn’t slept in a week or two, bent out on rum and tobacco, so his soulmate was the furthest thing from his mind as he cut the Gentleman Pirate down from his noose. The man’s face was a sickly pallor, anyhow, and he could barely mumble out a surprised response to Ed’s introductory inquiry before passing out from strangulation and blood loss. If the curve of his cheek was familiar, if the bloodied lip was an echo of another some 30 years past, Ed didn’t see it. And while he puffed on his pipe, watching the strange pirate sleep in his richly decorated quarters later that evening, the dream-mumbled words beard and mate held no more specific meaning than Mary or no, please.